40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Isaiah 24:16-25:9 (Episode 466)

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

To have an only hope, all other hopes must be stripped away. The sun is ashamed to shine on the judgment of God. But death will not win, and God will wipe away the tears of the nations. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Events Schedule 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Preorder Sinner Saint by Luke Kjolhaug The Impossible Prize: A Theology of Addiction by Donavan Riley Ditching the Checklist by Mark Mattes Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation, Book 1 of 2 by Amy Mantravadi More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

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and you could support all that work, support this podcast by becoming a reoccurring contributor. If you're somebody that has already done that, thank you very much. You do make all of this work possible. Chad, we are in Isaiah chapter 24. We are in a section titled The Judgment of the Whole Earth. Things are so bad that even wine is mourning because there's no reason to drink it. And that's what it's made for. And so it's languishing, it's mourning.

It was all pretty negative, but I think we, much like Isaiah does, it's almost like he pulls back the reins for a second where he's like, I don't want you to think that all hope is lost, just most of it. Which is the goal most of the time because he wants to reduce your hope down to one thing. So, like, to be reduced to, like, your only hope, like, all your other hopes have to crumble. And that's a lot of what Isaiah is doing. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Yeah.

Let's take all these other hopes and let's smash them to pieces, all these other things that you think you can rely on. And then you're going to look around and, oh, there's one hope left. Yeah, that's the only one that you need. It's God, the God who makes and keeps his promises. So yeah, in the midst of these 13 verses of a lot of formlessness and void and gloom and despair, and all of a sudden we have this hope that springs forth with shouts of joy. And then we'll go back to lament again. But let me read you these two and a half verses, really, that are going to summarize this. This is Isaiah 24, 14, 15, and half of 16.

They, we don't know who they are yet, but they lift up their voices. They sing for joy over the majesty of the Lord. They shout from the West, literally from the sea, because when you position yourselves like a Hebrew, you orient yourselves facing East. and therefore the sea is to your back to the west. So they shout from the sea, but they shout from the west. Therefore in the east, that's from the place of light, therefore in the east, give glory to the Lord.

In the coastlands or the islands of the sea, give glory to the name of Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel. From the ends of the earth, we hear songs of praise, of glory to the righteous one so you got i think one of the things that that becomes immediately apparent is this is not just a bunch of israelites lifting up their voices and singing over the majesty and the glory of the lord and that's one of the main themes of isaiah is that the promise that god made to abraham back in genesis chapter 12 that is going to be a blessing to all the families of the earth was not an empty promise that god's goal was always north south east and

west for the the blessings that stem from abraham to ripple forth to all the world and that becomes a recurring theme in isaiah we've already seen it we're going to see it a whole lot more when we get to the servant songs beginning with chapter 42 where god's servant the messiah when he comes it's too little a thing for him to be just a blessing to the people of jacob he's got to be a blessing to all the world. And there's going to be this worldwide movement of peoples to the promises of God, to the mountain of salvation. So here we have people from the west, from the east, from the coastlands of the sea. That's the way the ESV translate this. This particular Hebrew phrase, be'yei hayam, occurs I think 17 times in Isaiah. It's kind of his catchphrase for

the remotest part to the Gentile world. So the islands of the sea, the coastlands of the sea, the far-flung places of the world. Even from there, there's going to be people giving glory to the name of the Lord God of Israel. So this is a beacon of light in the midst of what we've seen so far is just a whole bunch of darkness and it's an indication that hey much better days are coming but before we get there we have to go through this this dark slump that isaiah has been describing god god just views things differently right and so um we're gonna see isaiah say hey but i say something different than what you just heard right like i like there's there's people lifting up their voice they're singing for joy and all this stuff and they're they're you know

they're singing songs of praise and glory to the righteous one uh i'm saying something different than that uh currently so what what is how does that work and it's and it's that in the midst of sort of this prophetic uh word it's like there is an end to this that uh looks like this which is the songs of praise and and all of this stuff uh but then he moves sort of like back into the immediate right but as for now and for for us not not us as a people uh because us as a people there's light at the end of this tunnel but maybe as maybe for us as individuals not so much uh and god does look at his promises sort of like that that not that god isn't concerned with the individual he is, but his promises apply to, like, generations, right? Like, generations and

generations of people. And so he's going to make good on his promises, but Isaiah's going to say, but, you know, for right now, I have a different kind of language coming out of my mouth. Yeah, for right now, as he goes on to say, I waste away. I waste away. Woe is me. Then he goes on to say, for the traitors have betrayed, with betrayal the traitors have betrayed. Actually, literally, it is, only Isaiah could pull this off, by the way. With betrayers, for betrayers betray, with betrayal, betrayers betray. It's just like a repetition of the same, the same word occurs over and over and over in different forms in that verse. We might translate that. Betrayers are out here doing what they do.

Yeah, they're doing what they do best They're just betraying And even the first part of that Is a whole string of words That all end with the same sound Raz-ee-lee, raz-ee-lee, oh-lee So all end with that E sound This is Isaiah doing what Isaiah does

I mean, he is like the poetic genius All of his lines are just Shakespearean in that way So this is him lamenting you know, all this, all this great singing and shouting for joy. Yeah, that that's, that's coming. But for now, man, I'm just sitting here wasting away. Woe is me because I'm surrounded by betrayal. He's not done yet. He's going to go on and he must like, he's really waxing eloquent here because he's going to build up even more of these, these typical Isaiah word plays. The next line in the ESV is terror and the pit and the snare.

So there is one translation. I think it's called the LSB Legacy Standard Bible. They captured it perfectly. So in Hebrew, it is pachad, vapachat, vapach. And all three of those words have the P sound and the H sound. and lsb has it translated as panic pit and pitfall which actually is not only only works in english but that's actually what the words do mean so terror and pit and snare or panic pit and pitfall so what about these three things they are upon you oh inhabitant of the earth he who and then

we're going to have these same three words occur in the next verse he who flees the sound of the terror shall fall into the pit and he who climbs out of the pit shall be caught in the snare so the you see this in other prophecies as well where you like amos talks about it's it's like if a man runs from a lion and a bear beats him or he goes into a house leans his hand on the wall and a serpent bites him and the idea is it doesn't matter if you try and get away from the pit well then terror is going to catch you if you're trying to get away from terror then the snare is going to get you there's no escape in other words for if you're in the habit of the earth then all these terrible things are going to come upon you you could run one direction well you're just going

to run into more trouble when you go there and the idea is that there's no escaping this judgment unless of course you escape to the the lord and the promises that he that he's made and really To capture this, this image of no escape, he ends verse 18 by alluding to something from which there was no escape back in Genesis 6 through 9, the flood, because he says, for the windows of heaven are open and the foundations of the earth tremble. So the windows of heaven is an obvious allusion back to Genesis 7, 11, where the windows of the heavens were open and down came the waters of the flood. Well, who could escape then? Well, of course, no one, unless, of course, you were with Noah on the ark. So the overall impact of these verses is, listen, if you're an inhabitant of the earth and this judgment is coming, well, there's no escape whatsoever, no matter which way

you go, because heaven's against you in the sense of the windows of heaven are opened. The earth is against you. The foundations of the earth are trembling. So there's no other place to go except to the Lord. and then just to wrap up this little section here in 19 and 20 he says he repeats the earth three times the earth is utterly broken the earth is split apart the earth is violently shaken in fact the earth staggers like a drunken man it sways like a hut its transgressions lie heavy upon it and it falls and it will not rise again so i mean a pretty complete picture here of what

he's talked about earlier in the chapter two where you know whether you're a master or servant whether you're the the creditor or the debtor whoever you are all of this is going to affect you and now he's moved into the bigger picture of even the heavens of the earth being involved in what's going on there's there's a uh a real sense in sort of this section of isaiah 2 of the if there is a victim of the transgressions of men it's the earth right and and and the earth is finally uh and maybe that this image isn't right but it's the image that comes to mind like like the earth has uh as sort of fought as long as it can fight and is starting to give way uh to the corruption uh of man right that it can no it can no longer uh hold up yeah that's a that's a

good way to put it yeah it's almost like uh it's it's it's been it's been holding its own trying to hold its own but after a while the the burden gets too heavy and it begins to crumble or uh to use the image that we just encountered in verse 20 you know it had uh it had one one sip of whiskey then in two and then three and then four and pretty sure it's it's staggering around it's intoxicated it's it's wasted literally because of everything that's fallen upon it because of the transgression of man all right i'm going to wrap up the chapter so this is 21 through 23 on that day the lord will punish the host of heaven in heaven and the kings of the earth on the earth they will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit they will be shut up in a

prison and after many days they will be punished then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed for the lord of hosts reigns on mount zion and in jerusalem and his glory will be before his elders so this is this typical on that day uh is a hebrew phrase that's gonna we're gonna see multiple times in these these coming chapters well you see it actually you see it all over the prophets this is the typical language for the day of the lord which can be either like the ultimate day of the lord or any of these what you might call small d days of the lord where god will intervene or visit in such a way as to cause some sort of judgment to befall his people or nations around his people so this is this day where god is going to literally

visit the host of heaven uh the verb that's used there in hebrew is one of these uh it kind of in the context so think of it this way you know if you get a visit from your uh uh your friend well that's great you know your friends come to see you that's that's fine but if you have to if you're a kid and you have to visit the principal's office where you get a visit from the irs well that that colors that visit a whole lot differently right and the hebrew verb is kind of like this so the esv translates it as punish which is fine but it's the lord's visitation which can be great or can be not great depending upon where you stand with him and this visitation is going to be on the host of heaven in heaven and the kings of the earth on the earth this is

more of this complete perspective that we've seen earlier and he could be alluding here to i'm not sure but to this idea of the the powers the dark powers being punished that you know paul talks about that multiple times in his epistles and it's in the old testament as well so the host of heaven here could be not just kind of speaking poetically about everything in creation effect but actually talking about some of the the dark spiritual powers of evil that are going to be punished along with the kings of the earth and their picture does kind of gather together in mass inside this dungeon and held there for the day of punishment and then he wraps it up by bringing in the sun and the moon confounded ashamed because the lord of host is coming

to visit to punish and he's going to establish his kingdom and reign from of course zion in jerusalem and his glory is going to be manifested before his elders now the way that chapter ends with this picture of god reigning from mount zion in jerusalem and his glory being before his elders is going to be a perfect transition into what we're going to encounter in chapter 25 where we're going to hear more about this mountain but that's the way this chapter this chapter wraps up with the worldwide perspective everyone affected and then the only place where there's actually protection and salvation is where god reigns from his kingdom which is established in zion yeah so if you're talking about like that sort of capital p punishment like the the sort of uh

the day of the lord the great day of the lord well one of the things that you know from the rest of scripture is that um yeah there is a a section uh or a portion of the the host of heaven that come under judgment um and uh and of course then people on earth as well and so it seems like you do have that that going on here we know from john and revelation that they all end up in the same place all right so you know you have one one big pit here one one big prison uh that's where they're going there together um now john will you know make it clear that uh this is a pit designed for the sort of host of heaven that have uh rebelled um but uh those and not for those on earth but those on earth will will end up there this language is interesting uh that the

moon will be confounded and the sun will be ashamed. It's almost as though on that day the sun will wish it wasn't shedding light on this. It wishes it could go dark. Because what does the sun do?

It provides light. It reveals things. If you walk out in the middle of the night you can't see much. Walk out in the middle of the day you can see everything. It seems as though on this sort of day of judgment when the punishment is being meted out the sun is wishing it could turn its back as it were to not to not have to show this

yeah it's kind of like it reminds me of uh the darkness the three hours of darkness when christ was on the cross it's almost like the sun was ashamed to shine that day you know it was like i think the church fathers often talk about how the the sun was in mourning it had as it were covered itself with with uh dark cloth so that it would not be shining upon this this uh terrible event that was happening when the son of god was being was being crucified so yeah that fits with exactly what's going on here the sun doesn't want to shine on this because of what's what's going on yeah which tells you something about the judgment like just because uh god is doing something uh and just because it's necessary to do doesn't mean that um he likes it

right it doesn't so the judgment is not something that uh god desires and because it's weird to talk about god like that doesn't god always get what he desires so um not necessarily he has he has seen fit to set things up to where sometimes he doesn't and uh and and judgment is not what i mean very clearly in scripture judgment is not something he desires to do yeah he doesn't desire the death of the wicked right yeah rather they turn from their evil way and live yeah and so when this must happen then you know this sort of one of these chief things of his creation the son is like oh this is a bad this is a bad thing uh not not not an unjust thing not an immoral thing but like not a desirable thing yeah yeah i always think of in that connection i always think of

jesus lamenting over the city of jerusalem oh jerusalem jerusalem you know how many times i wanted to gather you together as a hen gathers the chicks and yet you were you were not willing you know the uh you can almost you can hear the tone of his voice it's just like this heartbroken lament oh man it's almost like a parent for a child that has gone astray like you're just breaking my heart you know i've wanted this i've done everything oh that you would just listen to me you know uh that's kind of the same thing happening here with the the sun and the moon and being confounded and being ashamed you know why we don't want to shine on this yeah this this is not our desire well this this is true a lot with god where this is my translation but uh there's many

times when when god uh is in a position where he basically says something to the effect of i'd really rather not you know like there'll be some option there'll be two things that can happen and i'd really rather not not do this one like this is i i prefer it this one but like you're making this choice impossible like you're forcing my hand here like i'd really rather not do this yeah yeah that is that's true you see example after example of the scriptures all right well uh after that chapter we should move on to some uh some some more uh hopeful good news yeah so so we're gonna we're gonna you gotta love the the header on this i mean the header on this sounds amazing i like this god will swallow up death forever yeah right

can you imagine a better that sounds like a better picture it does for sure so uh we're going to start out here with uh let's see i'm going to read the first five verses uh kind of set things up for this whole swallowing of death oh lord you are my god i will exalt you i will praise your name for you have done wonderful things plans formed of old faithful insure for you have made the city a heap the fortified city a ruin the foreigner's palace is a city no more, and it will never be rebuilt. Therefore, strong peoples will glorify you. Cities of ruthless nations will fear you, for you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the

ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place. You subdue the noise of the foreigners as heat by the shade of a cloud so the song of the ruthless is put down you know i was thinking that this opening line oh lord you are my god it's pretty easy just for us to you know read that skim that not really take it in but that little uh that little word my is so important it's a word of faith right not just oh lord you are god that's true also but when you add my or our to that that becomes a word of faith my god and i am your child so when you when you encounter that in the scripture i would often see that in the psalms uh and i always think okay that's it that's that's the word of faith my god oh lord you are my god and he goes on to say i'm

going to exalt you and praise your name a fun little thing in the hebrew here where he says You have done wonderful things, plans formed of old. So that word for wonderful and that word for plans are the same two words that occur, or the roots of the two words occur in Isaiah 9, 6, where you have a wonderful counselor. So the wonderful is the same, the wonderful things. And the plans could also be translated as counsels. So you've done wonderful things, counsels formed of old, faithful and true. Well, how have you done this?

Well, you've done this in that same one who's described in Isaiah 9, verse 6, in the wonderful counselor. And then this verse ends by saying, faithful and true. This is Isaiah being a wordsmith again. You might translate those as firm and faithful, even as amen and amen. In Hebrew, it's emunah omen, same root of amen. This idea of stability and firmness and faithfulness, two different words, but both form from that same root. So God is faithful and true. He's the one to whom we can always say amen and amen.

And then the rest of that section I read, 2 through 5, really builds upon the idea that God is going to work in such a way as to bring to an end all those who have been opposed to the people of God. It talks a lot about foreigners and their powers and ruthless nations and using all kinds of images from nature, such as heat and storms. So all of these threats, basically, that the people of God have faced are now going to come to an end because God has become a shelter for his people. He's become a cloud to hide his people from the heat. from the heat and all of those cities and nations that faced against them that came against them are going to be turned into basically just piles of rubble because god has intervened in history to bring about the fulfillment of his promise in this one who's faithful and true yeah we're gonna i'll say more about it when we get to this uh death part but one of the things

that you have where you have this language of judgment and then you have this on the other side of it. I mean, so the great desire that you hear all the time from people is, when's God going to deal with all this bad stuff? There's so many bad things going on, this problem of evil or whatever it is. And God says, well, I would like to deal with that in myself. This is what the person and work of Christ are about. And so take all that evil and stuff and bring it over to me, and I'll deal with it.

And this is why God tarries and why he waits and why preachers go out, that you would compel other people to bring all their evil and wickedness to God and have him do something about it, which is to get rid of it, to forgive it and remember it no more. And at the end, though, the judgment is about the sort of dealing with all of the evil that is not given over to God to deal with. And then he deals with it in and of itself. And so that day is both great and terrible at the same time, where it's terrible because it's the punishment of the wicked. It's the sort of end of all things. But it's also the beginning of all new things.

And so on one hand, while being terrible, it is the beginning of great things because it's the beginning of all things new. And you're going to see that as it talks about, when we get to this next section about death, when you have this pit where you have like the the rebellion of the hosts you have the rebellion of the people of earth and they're all put in this pit well the other thing that's obviously put in this pit is death itself like this final consequence of sin and evil and wickedness all of this goes up into a pit and is all swallowed up together and again this is both a great and terrible thing in the sense that it's the end of all of that, which is the beginning of everything that God has promised.

But that event itself is also obviously a terrible thing, because the clock has run out, as it were. Yeah, I couldn't say it better than that. That's a great way to put it. And all of this is leading up to what we're going to see in these next few verses. I mean, all the terrible things that are going to happen of the judgment that have been described in chapter 24, beginning of chapter 25. All this is leading up to this threat that is greater than foreign peoples that are against us. And this threat is death itself.

So you might say, as you're reading through these things, oh, okay, well, this sounds great. You know, God's going to deal with the nations that are coming against his people. God is going to deal with this and that. But what about death? What about the last enemy to be destroyed? How is God going to deal with that? I mean, sure, he can make cities into heaps and fortified cities into ruin, and he can provide shelter from the storm and all of this.

Okay, but in the end, if we die, then haven't we still lost? Aren't we still defeated? Well, it means that salvation is always temporal until you deal with death. I mean, he can save you from whatever it is that you're facing, but this is a temporal salvation until death itself is dealt with. Yeah, just imagine in this life, it's like God comes to you and says, okay, if anybody's ever against you, I'll just take them out. Like, okay. And if you ever are in a bad financial position, I'll provide you with financial salvation. Okay, well, that's good.

If you're ever sick, I'll heal you. Okay. But then, if you're dead, then ultimately, what good did that do, right? You've still been defeated. So all this then leads us to what we're going to see in beginning with verse 6. On this mountain, so the mountain that was described already at the end of chapter 24, Mount Zion, Jerusalem, where the Lord of hosts reigns. So on this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine, well-refined.

And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. he will swallow up death forever and the lord god will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people will be taken away from all the earth but the lord has spoken well boy that sounds like something out of revelation does like this is where you're like i think that you're talking about the same event this is what i think because uh john borrows this language like almost verbatim it just says hey these tears that are coming out of your eyes those are getting wiped away on that day yeah john is the uh prophetic plagiarist right oh yeah he's he's uh he's pulling

from all over all over the old testament dear listener you can't read revelation until you've read the old testament you just you can't uh i mean you can but you you can't hope to understand it no there's yeah if you start with matthew and you go straight through and you get to revelation that's fine um but i would stop at revelation and then go back to genesis and read all that and revelations last for a reason make sure you read everything else first yeah that's so one of my favorite commentators on revelation is gk beal and it just so happens that he is deeply immersed in the Old Testament. So that serves him very well when it gets to Revelation.

I think the first thing to point out here is that there is this precedent in the Old Testament itself for God feasting with his people on a mountain. We saw that in, I think that's Exodus 24, where Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and the elders, They go up on Mount Zion, and they see the God of Israel, and they eat. They beheld God, we're told, and they ate and they drank. So this is all part of the covenant ceremony that's happening at Sinai.

So I think that's part of the background here, except, of course, this is a far greater mountain and a far, far greater feast. And for a far greater number and type of person, right? You might be confused and say, wait, is this for all peoples? And you're like, yeah, yeah, the idea here is not – obviously you have the judgment that that has happened. And you might – unless you'd be confused that the only people that are left are the descendants of Jacob or something. Like that's all that's left. And then it's just like just us. Like they're just the descendants of Jacob or – no, no, no, no, no, no.

I got people in all peoples. So I've – this is the language that we've seen over and over again. But if you're wondering if in the Old Testament there is this idea of the gospel or the promise going out beyond the borders of the people of Jacob, well, the answer is it's all over the place. And this is just another place where it's like there's going to be a lot of different kinds of people left over. Yeah, for all peoples, over all peoples, over all nations, from all faces. He can't say it more clearly. Yeah, people will come from north, south, east, and west to dine with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right?

And don't be confused. The food is going to be good, and the wine is going to be good. This is very emphatic on this point, that this food is high quality, and this wine is very high quality. Yeah. Whatever you think is the best restaurant with the best food in the entire world,

it's going to, in comparison to this, It's going to be like a bowl of cereal. I feel like the wine at the wedding of Cana is this wine. Their reaction, it makes it seem like maybe they got a little preview because they were like, whoa, what do we have going on here? And I'm like, yeah, well, when God's bringing out the wine, it's well-refined. It's well-aged.

I think that's what Jesus is doing. Let me give you a little sample of what I'm about. Yeah, I think God bottled this wine from the grapes that grew in Eden. How's that for some aged wine? It's been aging for a while. Been aging for a while. So this feast, we're told, is for all peoples. And verse 7 tells us something interesting, too,

because God is going to be there, and God is going to do some swallowing also, except this is a very different kind. He's going to swallow up on this mountain a covering that's cast over all peoples, the veil that's spread over all nations, and this covering and veil is death, which he will swallow up forever. There's a beautiful irony here because multiple times in the Old Testament, the pit or the grave or Sheol are pictured as this ravenous mouth that devours. so the grave devours you know shul's appetite is is never sated now everything is turned

upside down because god is swallowing death he is swallowing the pit he is swallowing shul and he does this of course by his death and resurrection so this is this is jesus stepping up opening his mouth and taking down the the paul that has spread over all nations he's swallowing up death forever in order that his people might feast upon this rich food this well-aged wine so this is a this is a resurrection feast because christ has swallowed death therefore his people swallow life and then it ends with this beautiful image of course which you uh referenced already dan about god wiping away tears from all faces and taking away the reproach of of his people well there's no reason to shed tears anymore because death which is that which produces the

most tears in this life has been taken care of and so rather than tears you have laughter rather than mourning you have rejoicing because god has destroyed the power of death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Yeah, there's this great thing that when Jesus is placed in the earth, God doesn't do these

things on accident. Jesus is placed in a tomb in the earth, and it looks at that point that death, the grave, has swallowed God. But on Easter Sunday, you find out the exact opposite

has happened as he walks out with that the swallowing was not the swallowing that you thought was happening yeah this is i love the i love the word eucatastrophe that tolkien coined and i mean that is it right oh it did the death of jesus in his burial well that was just a that was a catastrophe oh no no it was it was a eucatastrophe it was a good catastrophe because At the moment you think that you have reached the end with God, it turns out that's just the beginning. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, these verses will always remain at the heart of the faith because it's the heart of what the faith is all about,

and that is Christ's triumph over sin, death, and the devil by his resurrection from the dead. Do you ever wonder with – so you have the swallowing of death forever and the reproach, the sin, the shame. That's all baked into this sort of word, reproach. Because shame is like a nasty thing, and he's going to take that away. and sometimes I think we hear here and when we hear in John Revelation

we hear that wipe away these tears and I think we initially think like well that's the end of sadness and certainly that's true but both instances it seems like

these might be like tears of joy tears of disbelief that he is wiping from your face Because if death is over and sin and shame have been removed, I think you might weep and that he will wipe those tears away, that he will run his thumb across your face and brush those away. It seems that way to me. Not that sad tears aren't going to be eliminated. Of course, that's true. But this seems like, I mean, I don't know, dude, I'm probably going to break down crying when I realize that I have to not deal with any of that anymore.

Yeah, that is one of the things about tears is that they can be shed in times of laughter and in times of sadness as well. And yeah, I love the image of God walking up. And just like we might do with our child, we wipe away those tears and say, all right, no more need for tears. Only for great joy and only for great laughter because Christ is risen from the dead. Yeah. Amen. Well, I can't think of a better way to end this episode. We're in Isaiah.

We get an opportunity to end on a real positive note here. So let's take advantage of it. And we will be back next episode with more, some more good stuff at the end of this chapter for sure. sounds good we'll see you then see ya